Created in 2012, this American beauty brand is the most popular on Instagram and TikTok. Serums, moisturizing creams, cleansers, discover the reasons for its incredible success.
It’s impossible to browse social media without seeing their products. The darling of Generation Z, this beauty brand has become the star of chit chat make-up (videos whose aim is to discuss everything and nothing while doing your daily makeup routine) and has now risen to the top of the most desirable cosmetics brands of the moment. The most impressive: its growth remains relatively recent…
On TikTok the figures are clear. To her only, the brand brings together more than 260,000 videos, gaining more and more followers every day. And yet, this popularity was not a foregone conclusion when we look at its history more closely. Appeared in 2012, refined in 2013 then reformulated in 2014, the first range of the star network brand took some time before being revealed to the public. It is imagined by Tiffany Masterson, mother of four daughters and real beauty addict in the soul, one of whose main concerns was to help others with their skin problems. A victim of imperfections like most people, she deplores the lack of natural active ingredients within existing brands, already aware that overly artificial compositions could play a harmful role on the state of the epidermis. Without any experience in the field of cosmetics and business, Tiffany Masterson then decides to found his own company, supported by a few reliable friends. Far from having the reputation it has today, the brand was initially a sort of second activity allowing him to earn a living.
His daily life at the head of his “small business” came down to advising her clients on specific issues by offering them targeted products adapted to their skin type. Passionate about her work, Tiffany Masterson read a lot and discovered a passion for books dealing with cosmetics and chemistry. She quickly realizes that its customers’ concerns almost always revolve around the same things: unsuitable beauty routines, composed of harmful ingredients and/or which do not work with each other.Inflammation is the main trigger for skin problems, so I only wanted to use bioavailable ingredients, which the skin can absorb and from which it can benefit. I discovered that when I eliminated them from my routine, my skin texture improved and returned to a healthy, balanced state..”, confided the business leader in an interview for the Australian media Financial Review. From there, she decided to create her own products, using a high percentage of pH-friendly active ingredients, such as vitamin C, retinol, peptides and hyaluronic acid. Drunk Elephant was born.
Anchored in the “clean beauty” wave referring to healthy cosmetics, equipped with more natural components, Drunk Elephant reached its peak in 2019, just before the covid-19 epidemic. Having become the reference platform for new generations, TikTok is seeing the emergence of more and more “get ready with me” videos (videos whose aim is to share your beauty routine online), “chit chat make-up” videos during this period. or even “story time” (video in which a user tells a real or fictional story to entertain their subscribers), presenting numerous beauty products with colorful packaging.
Among the latter, a few in particular seem to have won over all the influencers: the anti-aging cream with polypeptides, recognizable by its mint green tip, and the B-Hydra Intensive Hydration serum, with the light blue cap, ideal for dry skin to very dry. Products both signed Drunk Elephant! And if it has already established itself as an essential brand, Drunk Elephant owes its transition from independent brand to cosmetics giant to its smoothies. An ingenious marketing invention which consists of offering a combination of several products from the brand in order to find the perfect beauty routine. Building on this success, Drunk Elephant was bought by the Shiseido group in 2019 for 845 million dollars, or 768.8 million euros, confirming its reign over the beauty sphere.
However, if Drunk Elephant products no longer have anything to prove in terms of effectiveness, particularly in terms of anti-aging properties, it is still appropriate to question the use of certain products by adolescents. Very famous, Drunk Elephant’s polypeptide cream is often seen in the hands of very young girls, sometimes minors, and whose skin does not yet require such rich and powerful active ingredients. At a time when the phenomenon of “Sephora Kids” is rife, these children addicted to cosmetics and makeup, it seems more necessary than ever to remember the wishes of Tiffany Masterson, at the time of the creation of her empire: “Eliminating ingredients to restore the skin is the Drunk Elephant philosophy. Using exclusively the products (that you need) is the solution to obtain the best results.“A word to the wise.